Stop Making Sense

Join us for a nationwide celebration of filmmaker Jonathan Demme!

Heralded by many as the greatest performance film of all time, STOP MAKING SENSE was Jonathan Demme’s documentary debut, showcasing the Talking Heads just after they achieved mainstream success with the album Speaking in Tongues and the single “Burning Down the House.”

“From the opening moments, when those white tennis shoes come into frame, revealing themselves from behind the shadow of the man wearing them, and the camera follows the shoes (and the man) out onto the stage where you see a radio set down—“Hi… I’ve got a tape I want to play!”—you know you’re in for something different. Something special is about to happen. David Byrne hits Play and then, for a period of time that never seems quite long enough, you’re put under a spell—the same trance everyone is put in when experiencing Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece, STOP MAKING SENSE.

With that in my head, and still truly inspired by the 1984 screenings earlier this year, I decided to reach out and put this screening together. This July, the art house community, which Jonathan adored so much, will band together to shine their projector lamps in unison (or as close to unison as we could get!) to celebrate the man whose work touched us all so deeply.

And that’s the keyword here: CELEBRATE! If Pauline Kael could dance in the aisles over 30 years ago, we can still do it today!

I firmly believe there’s no better film for the job than STOP MAKING SENSE—the greatest performance film ever made, a fantastic musical document, and 88 brilliant, beautiful minutes of the kind of pure cinematic joy that only Jonathan Demme could deliver.

Just be sure it’s played loud.”

– Andrew Jupin, Senior Film Programmer, Jacob Burns Film Center

A staunch lover of art house theaters, Jonathan Demme made it his mission to champion independent films and connect audiences to the best that cinema had to offer. He was also one of the most innovative directors of our time, directing and producing more than 40 films over his 40-year career. Demme’s films were nominated for 19 Academy Awards for Beloved, Rachel Getting Married, Melvin and Howard, Philadelphia, Married to the Mob, The Silence of the Lambs—for which he won the Oscar for Best Director—and more. Most recently, he created Protection Not Protest: the People of Standing Rock, a 20-minute short film for Tavis Smiley and PBS.